With all do respect to Dennis, as I think he offers an invaluable and unique service/forum here for the game community, but he needs to be called on the carpet for this: THE YOUNGEST GIRL IN RAPE LAY IS NOT 10 YEARS OLD!

While I haven't found exact information on the intended age of the girl, she is most certainly not 10 years old. This can be observed on a number of levels: 1) I assume his presuposition of the girls age of being 10 comes from here appearance, in comparison to her mother and sister, as being roughly prepubescent. This is easily explained. The older sister, is obviously late teens, as she is still wearing a highschool uniform. Now she is obviously well endowed by American or Japanese standards, but this is normal in the context of the Big-Boob fad that has been popular in Japan since about the 80s, if not the 60s by some reckoning. The mother is obviously more well enowed, being older and "maternal", but this is also to have her at the extreme end of the size spectrum. The youngest sister's "flatness" is easily explained as being targeted at those who find the traditional, and still very typical, skinny, girl-next-door look desireable. The three female characters are provided to offer 3 different possibilities based on the players preference for boob/butt size.

2) The girl is NOT prepubescent as in the game it is possible for her to menstrate and become pregnant. While it is possible for a 10 year old girl to be fully sexually mature and to become pregnant, it is highly uncommon and I doubt the designers intended this to be the case.

3) Finally, if she were 10 she would be in elementary school. If that were the case, a) she would not be wearing as provoctive of outfits and uniforms and b) she would have the quinessential "red backpack" you can see over and over in depictions of elementary school kids.

Honestly there are other rape game available in the U.S.
Virgin Roster - Shukketsubo for example or both The Sagara Family and Tokimeki Check-in! have one scene where rape is an option, all three of which have been licensed and translated for sale in the U.S. They've also been available a lot longer than Rapelay. If people wanted to bring out their moral indignation there was plenty of ammo a lot closer to home.

But those others would have required too much explanation. With a game called "Rapelay", it is instantly and immediately obvious what it is probably about, and you get to say the word "rape" every time you mention it, which provides a nice dose of shock value to help you sensationalize the issue.

Because when you save a girl who was raped by those who wanted to continue raping her and keep her as a slave, you kick those badasses into the visual Game Over and then save the girl.

But the girl still has those trumatic feelings and emotions from being raped, sometimes she might think that it was her fault that she was raped and she might try to kill herself.

So you have to slowly try to make her feel good about herself. Even just listening to her about her feelings and emotions, she might also want to talk about what happened in her childhood and other things that might be confronting.

Of course in the game you have to be considerate and say all the right things, or the best things you can at the time. And then slowly as she begins to trust you, and you begin to fall in love with her, that is when you can make love with her and show her that having sex does not always have to be something that is bad.

Well if I was making a Hentai type of game, that would be what I would love to make.

But I can only do that if I was in Japan though.

I might be able to make a western version, but the Hentai content must be cut from the game because as I know AO games are not marketable unless if they are on the internet.

"I've never held back my contempt for the game and didn't on today's program."

Don't feel bad, GamePolitics. It is common for those who seek the public's acceptance to piss on the ones immediately below them. By attacking games like RapeLay while defending virtual violence you suddenly don't seem so alien to the mainstream public, for now you have something in common: a hatred for games you happen to dislike.

In the words of Edmund Blackadder: "It is the way of the world, Baldrick - the abused always kick downwards. I am annoyed, and so I kick the cat... the cat pounces on the mouse, and finally, the mouse bites you on the behind."

The difference being that he's not trying to get it banned.---I'm not under the affluence of incohol as some thinkle peep I am. I'm not half as thunk as you might drink. I fool so feelish I don't know who is me, and the drunker I stand here, the longer I get.

---I'm not under the affluence of incohol as some thinkle peep I am. I'm not half as thunk as you might drink. I fool so feelish I don't know who is me, and the drunker I stand here, the longer I get.

He is not trying to get the game banned because it is already banned (or not for sale in the US). Rapelay is not rated by the ESRB so this is not another "hot coffee" scandal. This is an unrated, foreign language game brought to the US by someone else and all of a sudden we have a bunch of people crying and whining like this is a mainstream game widely available on store shelves. The game portrays a nasty subject yes it's true but this is an obscure piece of work available to less than 0.1% of people and IMO the more talk time we give this game the more we are actually hurting the game industry in general.

I can't listen to it. I clicked "Listen to the podcast", expecting it to let me listen to the podcast (how naive of me), but it just linked to a page with a bunch of other podcasts on them, ending on the 23rd. Maybe it's for the better. I'm sure it would have just pissed me off.

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Believe in something! Even if it's wrong, believe in it! -Glenn Beck

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Believe in something! Even if it's wrong, believe in it!
GET OFF MY PHONE!
-Glenn Beck

He did imply very strongly the game probably should be banned by equating it with child pornography.
"You know people are going to have fantasies and that is just part of human nature but if your going to permit a product
like Rapelay I...why is child pornography banned so if your going to have a game that is a graphic depiction of child
pornography in animated form...you know what's the difference? Basically if games want to approximate the human experience and do it in an animated fashion, what is the difference?"
I transcribed his comment as close to verbatim as I could, minus some umms and pauses.
Of course the answer to what the difference is, is the Supreme Court ruling striking down the application of laws against child porn to fictional depictions of minors engaged in sex. The court said those fictional depictions are not intrinsically linked to the sexual exploitation of children and are protected by the First Amendment as long as they are entirely fictional, distinguishable from real child porn, and not obscene. This why the protect Protect Act of 2003 was passed, to address the ruling. I have no problem with criticism of the game, just what seems to be strongly implied support for banning the game.

Don't have time to listen to the podcast before work, so this will be hypothetical. If Dennis criticized the content of the game, but was not advocating the banning or censorship of it, then there's no hypocrisy there. Criticism is perfectly legit, and everyone has a right to do it. The rest of this post can then be ignored.

If, however, Dennis supported the idea that this game should be banned, that is hypocrisy. With all the history he has of opposing people on this exact same kind of crusade, except against games that he does find acceptable, it would be completely hypocritical to flip flop and take up the same position he has so vehemently opposed, simply because this time the game in question is one that offends his own sensibilities. If you only support the freedom to do things that you approve of, well, that isn't freedom at all.

I think Rapelay is disgusting, too. Since I know I would find the content offensive, I choose not to play it, just as we tell all those people bothered by our precious violent games to do when they have a problem. Saying that it will turn people into rapists sounds an awful lot like our pal JT's "murder simulator" bullshit, doesn't it? That's because it is the exact same argument. If you oppose the argument when JT makes it about violent games, I don't see how you can use it against Rapelay and be anything but a hypocrite.

I'd just like to add that some people may try the argument 'well pedos and sickos might play the game and it may influence their damaged minds to go rape'.

This is also an argument that can be flipsided at violent games. Now let's say a mentally unstable individual commited some violent act and was inspired by games (supposedly). Most people on here would not be saying 'well the game should have never been out in the first place', we've been saying 'well if the kid's that mentally unsound he could have been triggered by anything'.

Also as has been noted, taking away games from everyone because a handful of mentally unstable people can't handle them is unfair and very wrong (I just wish people would think that way about guns too but I digress).

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

When Manhunt 2 was banned back two years ago, I was very much against the ban.

Why?

Well even though the violence I felt was a tad extreme, and I am not the type of person who plays Videogames with so much blood and realistic murders, I do feel for those who would have loved to play such a game as Manhunt 2 so therefore I was against the ban.

Now when something that I like, such as the Japanese Visual Novels, since they are getting attacked because of Rapelay and the controversy of the game, even though I would not want to play a game that allows the player to rape girls, I still try to defend the game by saying that what we do in the game is not really what we want to do in real life.

And to all those who are bashing Rapelay, where were you when Manhunt 2 was banned two years ago? Were you supporting the ban or were you against the ban?

Also I should note that I have nothing against those who don't like Rapelay, everyone has opinions. But to force those opinions on others and say that a game like that should be banned even in Japan is a little extreme since such games can only be sold in Japan and online stores.

There is less likely for kids to play it because of the limited avaliability of it.

So yeah, sometimes I wonder if some people who were against the Manhunt 2 ban of two years ago might also want to rethink their own position when it comes to Rapelay.

Yes rape is horrible but so is murder too.

But if you rape or murder in Videogames, and you know it is not real and that you will never do it in real life, isn't this a sign that humanity is more able to understand the difference between fantasy and reality when we are mature enough to understand it?

I may not have time to listen to the podcast so someone tell me, did Dennis call for the game to be banned or not?

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

Unlike the US, Japan has several alternative ratings systems. I imagine companies will begin to migrate to those.---I'm not under the affluence of incohol as some thinkle peep I am. I'm not half as thunk as you might drink. I fool so feelish I don't know who is me, and the drunker I stand here, the longer I get.

---I'm not under the affluence of incohol as some thinkle peep I am. I'm not half as thunk as you might drink. I fool so feelish I don't know who is me, and the drunker I stand here, the longer I get.

I am not comfortable with that argument, but I cannot fault it. That irritates me, because I find the game distateful, however I cannot then justify my own point of view becuase there is no way that murder can be considered less of a moral lowpoint than rape.

I therefore can find no personal alternative but to defend Rapelay, simply because the moment we start to make exceptions we undermine our very own positions.

Freedom of Speech is a stickler you either have to defend the aspects you don't like for instance Glen Beck with the aspects you do like for instance illwillpress.com or you have to give it up entirely. Its one of those all or nothing situations either everything is funny or nothing is funny (to steal from Southpark's Cartoon War) either art can express everything or it can express nothing.

It was everything is OK or none of it is (ok in terms of may we show this uncensored). It is clearly not the case that everything is funny, but it is also not true that nothing is funny.

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

Find it distasteful, and yeah perhaps i would be glad if there was some big clear reason to ban it. But.. there just isnt! And i feel the same, that no matter what my personal opinion of the game, that isnt any justification to ban it just because of that. I just think after spending years defending my right to play GTA/Manhunt etc, i would be a hypocrite not to also defend this.

Funny how you chose to respond to one of the more outspoken commenters about this issue :D

NovaBlack and I have made pretty much the same comments on every RapeLay story, along with many other commenters. I agree though, the more people who can see where the hypocrisy lies in being for the banning of such a game, the better.

Of course, there will always be people who realize they are hypocrites and are fine with it, because they allow their emotional response to override their logical response.

''I've never held back my contempt for the game and didn't on today's program''

hmm im still fasciniated as to why this game is held in such contempt, and lots of people seem to think it should be banned.. yet apparently games like manhunt and GTA (featuring mass murder and violent crime) are aparently 'art' and should be protected.

I dunno.. i just find it hard to understand where the line is drawn, and who it should be drawn by.

I mean dont get me wrong, the stuff that happens in rapeplay is completely not anything am personally interested in experiencing. But its not a real crime... , it not real in any way... there is no harm caused by it to any individual. Therefore the ONLY reason to ban it is personal taste/opinion . And thats the EXACT logic we have criticised others for *cough JT* in the past.

If for some reason i wanted to play this game, what reason would be valid for stopping me? I cant see one :S. At least not given the track record of logic that has been used to defend other games.

Hmm at the end of the day i really dont see 1 X child rape as any better or worse than 1000 X murder. They are both virtual crimes. They both arent real. They both dont cause harm. Therefore i dont see what the problem is with rapeplay. If you dont particularly want to play it (As for instance i havent wanted to) then.. umm.. how about not playing it?. Problem solved. I havent wanted to play it so far, and nobody has magically forced me to.

As many have said, it is personal taste as to why they want to ban this and allow other things for various reasons. There is no reason to ban it, but the fact it exists somehow angers a person so much that they want to ban it.

As for "not playing it", some of these people believe that this game is readily available to children who somehow may get the impression of women being used this way. It is a silly thing, I think most kids like to play the licensed stuff that is actually marketed (like Pokemon), and of course, the parents are the ones with the money to consume game products.

Oh, you didn't hear? Rape is far, far, far worse than murder! Death isn't as bad as being raped.

No, my guess would be that people have a much easier time demonizing sexual fantasies (no matter how normal, odd, or disgusting it is) rather than violent ones. It's an odd double-standard that people have. But then a lot of people love to demonize sex, even in the context of fantasy (such as games).

In the first Manhunt you're mostly hunting psycopaths and murderers. The torture's not necessarily "right", but you're doing it to bad men who've done bad things and intend to do unto you as well. In Rapelay the woman and her daughters haven't done anything to deserve it. t's harder to be outraged by immoral actions when they're done to Extremely Bad Men or at least adult men than when they're done to an innocent woman who's begging for mercy or a child. Or to phrase it different, it's a matter of characterization.

Taking a scene from a famous movie:Torturer takes a car battery and starts electrocuting someone who's hanging from the ceiling and drenched in water.

If Jack Bauer is the torturer and the guy he's electrocuting is a villain, the reaction is "OMG. Jack Bauer's a badass", and you're waiting to see the villain break (Generally).

When it's Mel Gibson being tortured by anonymous mook 387, the reaction is "Wow, what a sick freak. He's going to get it when Mel Gibson breaks free".

If it's an innocent woman or a kid being hung up and electrocuted, do the math. The key word there is "innocent".

-P, trying to remember if anyone complained about the crazy brat getting shot to death in Robocop 2

Since every example you give is fictional and nobody is actually hurt, I would never try to say that any of them should be prohibited. I may (and do) find some of them personally offensive and do not wish to see them myself. But far worse, in my opinion, is the notion that I, or anyone, have the right to impose that wish on anybody else and prevent the people who do wish to create and view such fiction from being able to. I am not obligated to watch or play something I find offensive. I am free to choose whether or not to watch, just as others should be free to create, and free to watch, or not, as they wish. That is far more reasonable than attempting to prevent anyone from making anything that could offend anyone else. Clearly that would be counter to the concept of freedom. Freedom is good. Censorship is bad. Peace.

I realize that people use context to justify certain things (you kill a random person on the street you're a murderer, in war you're a hero), but action like torture, general killing, or whatever is still a bad action.

But I think that's part of the appeal of games. I have zero desire to go out and kill anyone, but within a game, it's different. I do things in games that I would never do in real life (GTA being an obvious and prime example). I thought the sidewalk scene in Highlander was hilarious, and re-creating it in GTA is hilarious, but again, no desire to do so to real, live, breathing people.

Honestly? Same thing here with RapeLay. To many people, it's disgusting, and to those people, they don't have to play it. But for some people, it's a safe way to explore darker fantasies (again, same thing with the more violent video games out there).

Innocent people are killed in movies (and games) all the time (take any kind of horror movie like Friday the 13th). It just makes it more shocking. Bad things happen to good people.

There will always be people that take *any* kind of media (books, movies, games) too far and explore them in real life. Regardless of the format. These people need help *regardless*.

When a community start using it's opponents own arguments against it's own member,... well, it is a sad day. It usually means a community has gotten strong enough that it no longer needs unity and is free to exerisize the same predjustic that it endured in the past... i.e. the standard 'abused gets a chance to absuse' syndrome.

I'll be honest in saying that Im not to keen on people attacking games. That being said, rapelay isn't something you can honestly defend without admitting it's severly disturbing nature.

That said, I want to posit the following idea.

Is rape, in the context of being shown in a "Art" medium, such as movies or games, a problem in and off itself?

No, what is a problem, is when the Rape exsists in the game outside of any context, story, or greater moral or ethical message in the game.

And that is the problem with Rapelay. The game has no other purpose other then to allow a person to simulate acts of rape on digital charecters.

Rape has appeared in movies, games, and other medium for centuries, but always in the context of a larger narrative or story.

For games to be respected as an artform, we must accept that controversial, even offensive subjects will be brought up them. The issue however is if the subject is handed well, and done as part of a greater context or story, or if, in the case of rape lay, it's just an excuse to perform acts of rape on a number of digital women.

So dennis, I share with you the disgust for rapelay in and off itself, but let us not act as though subjects like rape dont' have a place in media.

It's all about how the subject is handled.

Yukimura is still here. "Well done Yukimura. You are japans greatest hero. Now, the chaos ends." Spoken by Tokugawa Ieyasu to Yukimura sanada just moments before Yukimuras death in Samurai warriors 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR9qIUXOjYY

Rapeplay is and always was a porno game, so we can't and shouldn't judge it as a mainstream game. Porn usually is sexual material with little or no context, yeah some pornos try to have a story but there will always exist those that don't.

I'm willing to defend the right of people to make and consume porn even virtual child porn (just not real child porn) with or without context to it.

Far as I'm concerned material that is meant to arouse the viewer that only involves consenting adults or inanimate objects is not 'bad' enough (for lack of a better word) to be considered for banning.

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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

I'm with you on that Father Time. As much as i find a game like RapePlay to be repulsive and disgusting (and believe me i have a high treshold for this), as long as no real children were involved, it should be perfectly legal for people to buy and play said game. The government should just stay the hell out of this issue.

"No law means no law" - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on the First Amendment

"No law means no law" - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on the First Amendment

Which is precisely what Miller'sobscenity test does. Green lights the rape or child abuse which has some artistic value and red lights the rape or child abuse which serves no useful purpose other than appealing to purient interests.

"Which is precisely what Miller'sobscenity test does. Green lights the rape or child abuse which has some artistic value and red lights the rape or child abuse which serves no useful purpose other than appealing to purient interests."

It isn't limited to rape and child abuse, though. Ordinary sex and nudity may also be obscene under Miller. Ultimately, obscenity is just a cop out that judges came up with to allow for censorship without it violating the US Constitution.

Shout box

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm

Andrew Eisen: That sounds horrifically boring. Doesn't sound like an interesting use of its time dilation premise either. 08/01/2015 - 5:36pm

Mattsworkname: an observer , seeing this sorta frozen world and being able to explore without any restriction other then time. no enimes, no threats, just the chance to explore08/01/2015 - 5:34pm